Execution likelier for blacker US murderers: study

[deadparrot]

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The more "black looking" an African-American man charged with murdering a white victim, the more likely he is to be sentenced to death, a Stanford University researcher said on Tuesday.

Using scores given by white and Asian-American Stanford undergraduates to rate facial features of 44 black men tried for murder in Philadelphia over 20 years, researchers found that 57.5 percent rated to have "stereotypically" black features such as dark skin were sentenced to death.

By contrast, 24.4 percent of black men in similar murder cases and rated by the students as less stereotypically black were sentenced to death, said Jennifer Eberhardt, a Stanford psychologist involved in the research.

Despite the use of ratings from only white and Asian-American students, the findings suggest jurors use stereotypes of black features as a proxy for criminality and punish murder defendants with those features more severely, Eberhardt said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060509/us_nm/crime_race_dc

[sam sarrha]

1. there is no scientific proof Death is a Penalty..so it is cruel and unusua

[Orrex]

2. Yet another reason why capital punishment should be outlawed

I think that the phrase "proxy for criminality" gets it exactly right. It's a shameful throwback to the long-dead quack science of phrenology.

[MadMaddie]

3. Not a surprise to the African American population....

[justice1]

4. I think the study is biased. Why didn't they include ratings from blacks?

[Igel]

14. It's a question I had.

I assume either they started with preconceptions and didn't collect the data, or they collected it and the data didn't say anything of interest.

You expect that if the data were collected and said nothing for the study to have a line to that effect. But not all researchers would say so, esp. if they view themselves as advocating a position instead of simply trying to understand.

On edit: They didn't collect the ratings from non-white, non-Asian-American undergrads in quantities sufficient to use. See my post below. They were advocates, although that may not be an important point.

[Up2Late]

5. Execution likelier for blacker US murderers: study (Reuters)

(...and they needed a study to figure this out?)

Execution likelier for blacker US murderers: study

Tue May 9, 2006 07:21 PM ET

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The more "black looking" an African-American man charged with murdering a white victim, the more likely he is to be sentenced to death, a Stanford University researcher said on Tuesday.

Using scores given by white and Asian-American Stanford undergraduates to rate facial features of 44 black men tried for murder in Philadelphia over 20 years, researchers found that 57.5 percent rated to have "stereotypically" black features such as dark skin were sentenced to death.

By contrast, 24.4 percent of black men in similar murder cases and rated by the students as less stereotypically black were sentenced to death, said Jennifer Eberhardt, a Stanford psychologist involved in the research.

Despite the use of ratings from only white and Asian-American students, the findings suggest jurors use stereotypes of black features as a proxy for criminality and punish murder defendants with those features more severely, Eberhardt said. "They do link although the students have no knowledge of who they are or who they murdered," Eberhardt said, referring to the defendants, their features and their sentences.

(more at link)

<http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=12134280&src=rss/domesticNews>

[Redstone]

6. Well, no shit. They needed a STUDY to figure this out?

I'd have told them that for five bucks.

Redstone

[Toucano]

9. Well, I'd have told them for free! And I've been doing it forever.

Sorry to underbid you! LOL!

[Redstone]

10. That's OK. You can have the business for free. Especially if you can

get someone to listen to you.

Redstone

[jwirr]

7. That is exactly why we opposed the death penalty in the 60s.

Any minority group murderer was more likely to be put to death than a white murderer. Until there was equal justice under the law there should be no executions.

[Captain Hilts]

8. This is news? And men who kill women but not women who kill men...

poor over wealthy, there are all sorts of unfair ways that that the death penalty is unfair.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

11. Probably just a coincidence.

[951-Riverside]

12. If Rusty Yates killed those children instead of Andrea

he would have been sentenced to death.

[Coventina]

13. Once again, Andrea Yates has a brain tumor!

A frickin' brain tumor!!

Doctors have said that it more than likely is affecting her perceptions and behavior. NO ONE with a serious mental illness can be held responsible for their actions!! Male or female, regardless of ethnicity.

[Igel]

15. Correlation. An interesting one.

But just a correlation.

Here's a better link:

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2006/may3/deathworthy-050306.html

"The relationship between physical appearance and the death sentence disappears, however, when both murderers and their victims are black."


"During two sessions, 51 mostly white and Asian Stanford undergraduates (the researchers did not include African Americans in case they influenced the raters' perceptions of stereotypes) looked at photographs of the 44 black male faces for four seconds each. The students, who were not told anything about the nature of the study, were asked to rate the faces for stereotypical features on a scale from one to 11." In other words, they didn't check to see if blacks hold the same attitudes.

"'Employing the same analyses as we did for the cases with white victims, we found that the perceived stereotypicality of black defendants convicted of murdering black victims did not predict death sentencing,' the authors write. Those who were perceived as "more black" received the death penalty 45 percent of the time, compared to 46.6 percent of those perceived as 'less black.'"

Ok, 600 some murder cases involving the death penalty, 44 were black-on-white (with 58%, or the perp in ~23 murders, being 'more black' and 24%, or the perp in 10-11 murders less black), 308 were black-on-black (with no or little significant difference for 'blackness'). The numbers are probably significant, but it's not like other interpretations have been ruled out.

What bothers me is that murder is usually a crime of opportunity and you usually know your murderer--that's the big difference for the race breakdown. I'm not sure, but I think most blacks that I've known have been in the 'less black' category--college, work, etc. (It would actually be interesting to do a parallel study with students from differently ranked colleges and professions). There may be racism there, but it may not be in the jury box.